Anti-immigrant reaction feared following attacks

Rudolph Bush, Tribune staff reporterCHICAGO TRIBUNE

Fear of terrorism has opened a door to xenophobia and racism that anti-immigration and white nationalist groups are seeking to exploit, even as their numbers have declined in the Midwest over the past two years, according to a report issued by the Center for New Community.

"The kind of fear and resentment that has emerged since Sept. 11 has created ripe organizing opportunities for both groups," Devin Burghart, director of the Chicago-based center's Building Democracy Initiative, told a crowd of about 175 at a downtown hotel Saturday.

It's too early to tell if such groups have capitalized by adding new members, but an organized effort is ongoing in the Midwest, Burghart said.

The same trend holds nationally, said Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala. "We have seen real efforts by anti-immigrant groups to recruit people by pushing this [attack] as somehow blamable on legal and illegal immigrants," he said in a telephone interview.

The California Coalition for Immigration Reform, for example, recently ran this headline: "The blood of our citizens. ... Immigration policy paved the way for the Sept. 11 attack."

And the White Aryan Resistance spread photographs of the burning towers of the World Trade Center across the front page of a recent newsletter.

Burghart and Potok noted that anti-immigrant and white power groups are increasingly working in tandem.

The news is a troubling addendum to a report that otherwise showed a slight decline over two years--to 267 from 272--in the number of white nationalist groups active in nine Midwestern states.

In Illinois, however, the number of white nationalist groups has increased by 9 percent, to 56, as bases of operation have shifted and new groups have cropped up, Burghart said.

The report comes at a time when many Americans, upset and angry over the attacks, are not sure which way to turn, said Cecilia Munoz of the National Council of La Raza, a Latino rights group.

Although it is possible that some people will look to isolationist and racist groups for answers, it is equally plausible that the country will become more open-minded, Munoz said.

"We must battle for the hearts and minds of people who might listen to the hate groups because they're worried," she said.

The center's report noted a growing movement among many white nationalist and anti-immigration groups to shed militia-style, out-front bigotry in favor of a more mainstream political approach.

Such groups are especially worrisome, Munoz said, because they present themselves as policy reformers even though many are based in and funded by known hate groups.

Burghart refers to the national trend as moving from "pitchforks to politics," with the aim of gaining political credibility. Some groups have been successful at the local level, he said.

Chuck Zlatkin, a Manhattan postal worker who lives a few blocks from ground zero, attended the conference with the concern that the country is shifting away from inclusion.

Even in his neighborhood of progressive politics and immigrants, the rhetoric of exclusionary groups has resonated.

"Somehow there was this feeling that this [attack] had crossed the line, so this is OK," Zlatkin said. "I wasn't prepared for it. I didn't know what to say."

Amid the fallout from Sept. 11, there also are encouraging signs, participants said.

Munoz noted that although a number of Arab-Americans have experienced a racist backlash, many have told her those episodes have been diminished by an outpouring of support.

Darren Sandow, with the Long Island Unitarian Universalist Fund, said groups in his area have been unsuccessful in organizing propaganda aimed at Arabs and Muslims. But he fears that if people aren't vigilant and vocal in their stand against such groups, "their time is coming," he said.